


As Days Go By

by JanusOliver



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Nebraska, Seasons, West - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-18 15:17:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15488766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JanusOliver/pseuds/JanusOliver
Summary: Just a little think piece on my home state of Nebraska. Mainly deals with the seasons.





	As Days Go By

**Author's Note:**

> This was an old college essay that I decided to re-write. The prompt was how you think Nebraska fits into the concept of the West. It's probably some of the nicest things I've ever said about the state.

In 1803 Thomas Jefferson procured the Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon, a 530,000, 000 acre stretch of land from New Orleans to Montana. It was the beginning of Manifest Destiniy. A fever that would also swallow California, Oregon, Arizona, and Texas pushing out into the new frontier of the United States a strange and dangerous land not yet tamed by the Europeans and Americans trying make it home and still maintains a sense of wildness in its roots.   
What is the West? It is a direction on the compass that in general of the United States evokes golden beaches, Disneyland, rain, Starbucks, deserts, mountains, Native Americans, cowboys, and the distinct feeling of a capital W. The West is a secret mythical place where Native Americans once wandered amongst the buffalo and cowboys mourned elegies to skies on cold nights wandering from Texas to Wyoming. It is steeped in the lore of gunslingers’ blood, outlaw legends, and just a tiny pinch of Native American mysticism to shroud the West in blasé haze of glory and gold.  
I never thought of myself to really belong to the West with a capital W, Nebraska nestles itself almost in the direct middle of the country, placing me comfortably in the Midwest, the heartland, not quite close enough to be the East and the West too far to hope for. The Midwest that has neither sophistication of the East coast nor the fashionability of the West. The Midwest is in its truest form fly-over country. However, I have had people from New York and California ask me if we had electricity, if we still lives in sod houses, if we still scalped Indians, and if we had to ride horses to to school. Unfortunately, dealing with such idiocy tends to put into perspective why one chose to be the Midwest in the first place.  
The plains can be unyielding and harsh, but also giving and sweet. In the Spring I hate the mornings because it is freezing, three coats, mittens, and a hat and you will still feel the sharp wind cut straight to your marrow. The afternoons are horrible as well hot and sweaty now those winter clothes are useless added weight to load things you have to carry. The sun blazes down on the earth, the soft splatter of water echoes off the pavement and grass, ice shrinking and snow shifting in the heat just waiting for sunset before solidifying back into ice in the stealth of the night creating a vicious labyrinth of slick ice sheets to coat the sidewalks and roads. All manner of birds start chirping in the morning, like every morning must be as colloquial as the television makes us out to be, making me wish there was a quick procedure for removing vocal chords and green steals away the hoary coat of Winter. Nebraska is not all green, only really on the Eastern side of Nebraska, where there is a higher rainfall. In Western Nebraska, granted I am not an expert, green and yellow entwine starkly across the plains where the Sandhills break the smooth plateau, rising dignified in their ruin. It gently grows on me, slightly warmer each day and between one breath and the next the repetitious grumble of, “The weather needs to decide if going to hot or cold!” slowly recedes until Summer sneakily steals itself across the plains.   
In the Summer the plains are ripe and verdant, nearing the dog days of summer I make my trek from East to West to attend college, the change just in Nebraska is astounding as the pavement of civilization opens to farmland with corn or soybeans swaying in the breeze and soaking up sun. Ever so slowly across miles of winding highway the farms give way to miles of sprawling ranch land empty save the endless stretches of barbed wire and dark dots speckling the horizon that could be cows or the imagination. The change start subtly with green military neat grass gives way to the wild weeds of the ditches, trees start to thin slowly letting the skeletal shadows of fencing to over take them dancing on the ground, and the Sandhills come into focus rough and tumble like a giant tried to make sand castles during a drought. The Sandhills used to be mountains that could have reached heights that Everest could never dream, ground back into the earth by wind and rain and time, now they are thrones to cows staring off into the distance or you as the car speeds by them.   
Autumn should be the most hated and loved season, as it is the closest to Winter, but also the farthest one can get from the next one. In my home town Autumn always meant raking leaves and once again, bundling up like an Inuit in the mornings only to sweat off the extra five layers of protection by lunch, just in time to appreciate the last hurrah of summer conditions. On the Western side of Nebraska, it’s different there are trees and leaves to rake, but the cold seems to nip just infinitesimally faster and the wind howls aggressively across the rolls of countryside screaming down the inevitable bitter cold that sutures itself into your lungs and does not quite leave until May.   
Then comes Winter the cold-blooded Valkyrie in her frosted glory, waiting to claim the unfortunate souls foolhardy enough to brave her weather. Winters are harsh in Nebraska especially in the Western part as they tend to get more snow, but it is a constant battle against ice, snow, filthy slush churned up by traffic packing down the snow into neat slick grooves safer to drive on than a fresh blanket. Snow leeches the color out of the landscape, the green highway signs for towns and mile markers, if not covered stand out bright and glaring under the clouded skies.  
The Plains wear many faces, innumerable to count, but her seasons are some of her more frequently seen. It leaves the impression of a beautiful loneliness, a Femme Fatale who will take the opportunity to embrace you as to ruin you completely. The Great Plains is in the words of my father are, “a good place to be from”, but like all good things they are in the eye of the beholder or so they say making these plains what you enjoy and cheerfully accept or your most hated enemy preventing one from reaching for stars as other cultural meccas as Los Angeles and New York City are wont to do.  
Either way Midwest or West it is inconsequential because in spite of a label Nebraska still holds a subtle and graceful beauty. One just needs to look to see it.


End file.
